Vista Notebook

[bcastner]

A place for information and links on Vista RTM

Microsoft Vista Home Site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

What are the system requirements for running Windows Vista?

Bare minimum:

DVD Drive
800 MHz PC
15 GBs of free hard disk space
512 MBs of RAM
64-MBs of vRAM - For AERO Glass

Premium Ready PC:

DVD Drive
1GHz PC
20 GBs of free hard disk space
512 MBs of RAM
128 MBs of vRAM

Learn more at the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx

Can I Upgrade to Vista?

See for answers the following discussion and product table:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade.asp

How do I install Windows Vista?

You have two choices, you can either upgrade from Windows XP by launching setup from within Windows and choose the upgrade option during the installation wizard; (Vista requires that you have a minimum 13 GB’s of free disk space before upgrading). You can also start a new installation by booting from the DVD drive, (make sure the boot drive in your BIOS is set to the optical drive).

Note: If you want to upgrade Windows XP make sure you launch setup from within Windows XP SP2; upgrades are not supported by booting from the DVD. Upgrades are not supported for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition at all; Vista x64 requires a clean installation. there are no upgrade paths from Windows XP Professional x64 to Vista x86 or x64 or Windows XP x86 or x64 to Vista x64. You cannot launch Vista x64 setup in Windows XP x86, if you do so, you will receive an "invalid Win32" error, you have to boot off the DVD.

Can I uninstall Windows Vista and return back to Windows XP?

No, if you need to use XP, you will have to reinstall it. If you are uncertain about upgrading to Windows Vista, it’s always best to do a dual boot installation by installing Vista on a logical partition or another hard disk.

NOTE: For persons with SATA/RAID configurations, please ensure you have appropriate drivers for either x86 or x64 platform to load when requested during setup. Also remove any unnecessary external devices that might cause problems detecting during setup, this includes external drives and USB based devices.

Can I install/dual boot Windows Vista on an Intel Mac?

Yes you can, to do so you need to use Apples Boot Camp software which has to be installed on OS X which is then used to create a NTFS or FAT32 partition (still in BETA, Boot Camp will be finalized with the release of Apples next version of Mac OS X, 10.5 codenamed Leopard).

Valuable Boot Configuration Freeware for Vista

EasyBCD:

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

VistaBootPro:

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

The Installation

See this picture-filled tutorial:

http://activewin.com/articles/2006/16.shtml

How long does it take?

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/w...sta-Imaging-and-Installation-Performance.aspx

Help!

Current Newsgroups for Windows Vista:

microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
microsoft.public.windows.vista.music_pictures_video
microsoft.public.windows.vista.administration_account_passwords
microsoft.public.windows.vista.file_management
microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices
microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup
microsoft.public.windows.vista.mail
microsoft.public.windows.vista.networking_sharing
microsoft.public.windows.vista.performance_maintenance
microsoft.public.windows.vista.print_fax_scan
microsoft.public.windows.vista.security
microsoft.publi.windows.64-bit.general

If you want to access the web based version of these newsgroups, click the following link:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx

To configure your newsreader to read Microsoft's Public Newsgroups:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroupsetup.mspx

Windows Vista Team Blog

http://windowsvistablog.com/

Microsoft Vista Virtual Pressroom

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsvista/default.mspx

Thanks: Microsoft various, Andre de Costa, Paul Therriot

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____________________________
Users Helping Users

 

[linney]

Thanks for that list and links, they will come in handy over the days and weeks ahead.

A couple of comments from things I have experienced over the testing phase.

Bare minimum, it did install and run on a 566MHz machine.

Dual boots with XP, this knocks out System Restore Points on Vista every time you boot into XP.

 

[smah]

bcastner, are you sure about the 64MB of vRAM being able to use AERO Glass? Everything I see says 128MB for AERO.

 

[bcastner]

smah,

As a minimum on-board the adapter the statement is correct.

However, anything related to using Glass is more complicated than that. For example, a distinction is drawn between a video adapter with onboard RAM and a video adapter built-in to the motherboard and using shared memory.

Then there are the results of your video card not being Direct X 9 compatible.

There is no consistency, I believe, in the requirements that are required to use Glass. For example, a system running Vista with a 128 MB AGP video card and 512 MBs of system RAM may only get the AERO Basic experience because the system RAM is too low to effecively use DirectX 9.

For the standard Administrator account you can force some things if Vista does not cooperate:

Run REGEDIT and ensure that you have the following registry value set to :

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM\Composition set to 1 (32-bit DWORD) HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM\CompositionPolicy set to 2 (32-bit DWORD)

Restart DWM by opening a command prompt with administrative privileges

- Type 'net stop uxsms'
- Then 'net start uxsms'



____________________________
Users Helping Users

 

[wolluf]

Bill - appreciate the info as ever - where do you get the time to keep tabs on all this stuff!

 

[Nelviticus]

There are three of him and none of them ever sleep.

Nelviticus